100 Country Quotes about Friendship among Nations

Are you proud of the country you have grown up in or would you rather prefer to have been born in another country? The following list of inspirational country quotes show what it means to have a home but also highlight the importance of constructive cooperation between nations. And if you can’t get enough of good quotes, you will definitely like these Theodore Roosevelt quotes.

Maybe you’ve grown up in the greatest country in the world and are proud to be its citizen. If you’re lucky enough to have grown up in a free and open society, you may feel a great amount of gratitude for everything your country has given you. That’s reason enough to cherish the nation you have grown up in and to actively participate in helping it to remain a fabulous country.

“Friendship among nations, as among individuals, calls for constructive efforts to muster the forces of humanity in order that an atmosphere of close understanding and cooperation may be cultivated.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt

On the other hand, there are also many people who have grown up in a rather oppressive country. For this reason, they may not be that proud of their country and its history.

These inspirational country quotes highlight what it means to be a caring citizen of a responsible nation

While none of us can choose when we are born, modern life has at least given us the opportunity to move to a country that better suits our preferences.

100 Country Quotes about Friendship among Nations

The following quotes were written by fellow citizens who held their country dearly but also criticized it whenever things were going in the wrong direction. As such, these authors celebrate the country they can call their home but have also become part of the outspoken moral consciousness of the country. Enjoy reading!

Here’s our selection of country quotes

1.

“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.”
Theodore Roosevelt

2.

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
Cicero

3.

“A Country is not a mere territory; the particular territory is only its foundation. The Country is the idea which rises upon that foundation; it is the sentiment of love, the sense of fellowship which binds together all the sons of that territory.”
Giuseppe Mazzini

4.

“At a certain time in our existential experience, we must just not want better for ourselves, but for our country and the success of our countrymen.”
Henry Johnson Jr.

5.

“Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.”
Mark Twain

6.

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country.”
Theodore Roosevelt

7.

“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.”
Mark Twain

8.

“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
Thomas Paine

9.

“Never was a country worth living in unless its sons and daughters were of that stern stuff which bade them die for it at need; and never yet was a country worth dying for unless its sons and daughters thought of life not as something concerned only with the selfish evanescence of the individual, but as a link in the great chain of creation and causation, so that each person is seen in his true relations as an essential part of the whole, whose life must be made to serve the larger and continuing life of the whole.”
John Gabriel Hunt

10.

“A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.”
Leo Tolstoy

11.

“The greatness of a country is not measured by wars that are won, by territory annexed or even the size of a deficit. It is measured by the beauty of the artwork by talented hands, the sounds of the music created from the heart and by the wonder of the eyes and ears beholding them in joy. Art and music are the windows of the soul of any country. The greater the art created, the greater the country.”
Clarrissa Lee Moon

12.

“Even if my country does seem to have forgotten me, I have always thought about it.”
José Rizal

13.

“America is a leap of the imagination. From its beginning, people had only a persistent idea of what a good country should be. The idea involved freedom, equality, justice, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Ian Frazier

14.

“The truest test of civilization is not the census, size of cities, or crops; but the kind of man the country turns out.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

15.

“I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”
Theodore Roosevelt

Do you want more country quotes? Keep on reading…

16.

“I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
James Baldwin

17.

“Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives.”
John Adams

18.

“There is a debt of service due from every man to his country, proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him.”
Thomas Jefferson

19.

“The success of any country relies on the commitment of its leaders to serve others.”
Gift Mona

20.

“It’s not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it’s the most patriotic thing we can do.”
E.A. Bucchianeri

21.

“Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it’s not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit.”
Hugo Hamilton

22.

“Unhappy the land that is in need of heroes”
Bertolt Brecht

23.

“Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.”
Bertrand Russell

24.

“He serves his party best who serves his country best.”
Rutherford B. Hayes

25.

“In the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it.”
Barack Obama

26.

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”
Edward Abbey

27.

“The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.”
Julian Barnes

28.

“My country is not just my soil, but it is also my soul that breathes in my body. I am the strongest advocate of my land and people, wherever I am. It does not matter, how bitterly I criticize them, even though, they are my real love and respect.”
Ehsan Sehgal

29.

“The country does not live unless we make the leap from our tribe or focus group or gated community or demographic, and land on the shaky platform of that idea of a good country which all kinds of different people share.”
Ian Frazier

30.

“My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor.”
Herbert Hoover

Country quotes like this really make you think

31.

“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”
Ernest Hemingway

32.

“Our home villages with the hills, mountains, and forests, the lakes and ponds, rivers and streams, waterfall and fjords. The smell of new hay in summer, of birches in spring, of the sea, and the big forest, and even the biting winter cold. Everything… Norwegian songs and music and so much, much more. That’s our Fatherland and that’s what we have to struggle to get back.”
Neal Bascomb

33.

“The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight.”
Theodore Roosevelt

34.

“Patriotism is love of country. But you can’t love your country by loving your tribe or party. You can’t love your country by putting your-self interest first than that of your country’s.”
Henry Johnson Jr.

35.

“Citizens are not born, but made.”
Baruch Spinoza

36.

“We aspired to intelligence, we didn’t belittle it. It didn’t make us feel inferior. We didn’t identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election and we didn’t scare so easy. We were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed… by great men, men who were revered. First step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one. America is not the greatest country in the world anymore.”
Aaron Sorkin

37.

“When we see people as human and not citizens of another country, we fulfill the values of humanity.”
Jeffrey G. Duarte

38.

“Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men, without a consequent loss of liberty?”
Patrick Henry

39.

“I love my country, not my government.”
Jesse Ventura

40.

“India is not a nation, nor a country. It is a subcontinent of nationalities.”
Muhammad Ali Jinnah

41.

“If any country wishes to be great, the citizens must pursue godliness.”
Lailah Gifty Akita

42.

“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”
Samuel Adams

43.

“What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”
Thomas Jefferson

44.

“When a citizen gives his suffrage to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country.”
Noah Webster

45.

“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”
Kurt Vonnegut

These country quotes highlight the importance of being a devoted citizen

46.

“I think we’re always trying to recapture that feeling of being a country of superheroes.”
Catherynne M. Valente

47.

“Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.”
Lucille Ball

48.

“In this country we have no place for hyphenated Americans.”
Theodore Roosevelt

49.

“A country without vision runs into every direction.”
Toba Beta

50.

“One cannot worship the false god of nationalism and the God of Christianity at the same time. .”
Martin Luther King Jr.

51.

“The biggest lesson is you get the country you work for. If you sit back and simply allow your country to be, it is highly unlikely to be the kind of country you want. You have to be active.”
Mohsin Hamid

52.

“Which is more just? A law for humanity or a law for a country? Any law that flies in the face of humanity is unjust. Slavery was an unjust law and it was a law against humanity.”
Jeffrey G. Duarte

53.

“I wonder what it felt to move to a country where you didn’t grow up. I had thought about that often since my sister got married. Do you become a character in a story native to that land, or do you, somewhere in your heart, want to return to your homeland.”
Banana Yoshimoto

54.

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
Howard Zinn

55.

“If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace. „
Hamilton Fish

56.

“To me, patriotism means dedication to the principles on which the country was founded and a willingness to stand firm and fight for these principles regardless of what the government says or does”
Richard J. Maybury

57.

“How you see a country depends on whether you are driving through it, or living in it. How you see a country depends on whether or not you can leave it, if you have to.”
Alexandra Fuller

58.

“Pick a leader who will make their citizens proud. One who will stir the hearts of the people, so that the sons and daughters of a given nation strive to emulate their leader’s greatness. Only then will a nation be truly great, when a leader inspires and produces citizens worthy of becoming future leaders, honorable decision makers, and peacemakers. And in these times, a great leader must be extremely brave. Their leadership must be steered only by their conscience, not a bribe.”
Suzy Kassem

59.

“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country”
Nathan Hale

60.

“Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to get the truth back.”
Gore Vidal

61.

“If there is no love for others, love of country is just a slogan.”
T.F. Hodge

62.

“Money is a servant to politicians and the country. But, if the politicians and the country become the servant of the money, the politicians have failed.”
Oliver Kemper

63.

“One’s country is like oneself. The more you learned about it, the more there was to be ashamed of.”
Jeffrey Eugenides

64.

“A patriot is not someone who condones the conduct of our country whatever it does. It is someone who fights every day for the ideals of the country, whatever it takes.”
Kamala Harris

65.

“I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now… Come further up, come further in!”
C.S. Lewis

Here are even more country quotes for you

66.

“It’s such a shame that we know so little about our own country, that we can’t find it in our hearts to love our own kind. Instead, we admire those who show our country disrespect and betray its people.”
Orhan Pamuk

67.

“It is not what you can do for your country, but what you can do for all of mankind.”
Mike Norton

68.

“This is my country, that is your country; these are the conceptions of narrow souls – to the liberal minded the whole world is a family.”
Virchand Raghavji Gandhi

69.

“But the Lacedaemonians, who make it their first principle of action to serve their country’s interest, know not anything to be just or unjust by any measure but that.”
Plutarch

70.

“Every country is a battlefield for the struggle between honest and dishonest, between honorable and honourless people! In the end, the character of that country will be determined by whichever group wins!”
Mehmet Murat ildan

71.

“All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers… Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.”
Francois de Salignac de La Mothe-Fenelon

72.

“As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”
Virginia Woolf

73.

“Leaving a place, a person or a country silently and without any notice is a heroic and a noble way of teaching the importance of your presence to those who ignore your existence!”
Mehmet Murat ildan

74.

“One’s love for his country is a very sacred emotion that is intertwined with their sense of moral obligation and is an essential part of one’s identity.”
Aysha Taryam

75.

“One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland – and no other.”
Emil M. Cioran

76.

“I’m no more modern than ancient, no more French than Chinese, and the idea of a native country, that is to say, the imperative to live on one bit of ground marked red or blue on the map and to hate the other bits in green or black, has always seemed to me narrow-minded, blinkered and profoundly stupid.”
Gustave Flaubert

77.

“A bright man of conviction and action is a beacon to his country, but a flashlight to the scurrying of inaction, ego, and insecurity of lesser men.”
Daniel S. Green

78.

“The constitution does not provide for first and second class citizens.”
Wendell Lewis Willkie

79.

“For the sake of my country, and perhaps a little for the sake of my soul, I have given up the deep peace of being in opposition.”
Rebecca West

80.

“In a country of ideas, consciousness is its’ citizen.”
Toba Beta

81.

“Never confuse fighting for one’s government with fighting for one’s country.”
J. Adam Snyder

82.

“A country cannot change, be transformed or developed as long as there is no truth and honesty as an everyday principle among the citizens of the nation.”
Sunday Adelaja

83.

“If you want to be a true citizen then, be.”
Santosh Kalwar

84.

“The Czechs loved their country not because it was glorious but because it was unknown; not because it was big but because it was small and in constant danger. Their patriotism was an enormous compassion for their country.”
Milan Kundera

85.

“Be a true opponent of the government, by being a true patriarch of your country; defend your country from the heart, on the fundamental issues of the country’s constitution.”
Enock Maregesi

86.

“Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.”
Voltaire

87.

“Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”
Arthur Schopenhauer

88.

“No country can police corruption in other countries when it itself is not free from corruption. You cannot clean a dirty wall with dirty hands.”
Suzy Kassem

89.

“It is sobering to reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.”
Charles A. Beard

90.

“No office in the land is more important than that of being a citizen.”
Felix Frankfurter

91.

“While we keep legislating for our own interests the country will not move forward.”
Victor Bello Accioly

92.

“I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.”
Albert Camus

93.

“People are the root of the country.”
Tamuna Tsertsvadze

94.

“A true patriot loves humanity, not just their country or community.”
Debasish Mridha

95.

“Do you know the difference between an expat and an immigrant? You’re an immigrant in a country you look up to, an expat in one you consider beneath you.”
Rabih Alameddine

96.

“A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril. „
Winston S. Churchill

97.

“I strongly believe that informed, educated citizens (who would never dream of asking others to do their thinking for them) are nation-builders.”
George Stamatis

98.

“The highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one’s country”
George S. Patton Jr.

99.

“Patriotism is a thing difficult to put into words. It is neither precisely an emotion nor an opinion, nor a mandate, but a state of mind – a reflection of our own personal sense of worth, and respect for our roots. Love of country plays a part, but it’s not merely love. Neither is it pride, although pride too is one of the ingredients.”
Vera Nazarian

100.

“I think I have many spenglerian moods about the country, and that someday people will look back and think ‘this was a really goofy, unadmirable stupid time.”
Dick Cavett

I hope you enjoyed this collection of inspirational country quotes. Do you have a favorite quote about your own country? Share it with us in the comment section.

Stay victorious!